


Swallow

by chelonianmobile



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Animal Abuse, Animal Death, Blood Drinking, Breathplay, Bugs & Insects, Captivity, Drowning, Force-Feeding, Gen, Guro, Horror, Illnesses, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Infection, Kink Meme, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Sexual Harassment, Squick, Starvation, Vomiting, Vore, brief scat reference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2015-03-09
Packaged: 2018-02-09 01:16:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 7,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1963503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chelonianmobile/pseuds/chelonianmobile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: "Equius seems un-torture-ble, because of his submission kink. The Grand Highblood is the master of torture and realizes the best way to torture his new toy is to force him to do something he is personally against..." Please note tags. This is pretty extremely squicky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Equius swallowed the last of the rough, stale bread and pushed the grubloaf to the side. He'd feed it to the nest of squeakbeasts in the corner of his cell. Bringing a little pleasure into the lives of small creatures made the nagging hunger far more bearable. He rolled onto his back and lay on his bruises, enjoying the satisfying ache. He didn't know why his captor still bothered; the great STRENGTH of his muscles prevented any serious bone or organ damage, and simple pain was no issue for him. Rather enjoyable, in fact, but even if it wasn't, he would have withstood much more to keep Nepeta from harm. Of course she wasn't what they were looking for, but if they found the Signless' followers, they would find her. As for their attempts at subjecting him to the dreaded chucklevoodoos, living next door to Vriska had taught him from an early age how to resist psychic attacks. The Grand Highblood could of course have smashed his mental defenses with ease, but he seemed to be saving that for a last resort - from professional pride, Equius guessed, determination to break this upstart adolescent without resorting to such a simple method. Whatever the reason, he wasn't complaining.

~

Equius woke strapped to a chair in an ill-lit and foul-smelling room, again. He pulled as gently as he could at his restraints, testing them, not to break free but to admire their craftsmanship. They held his limbs tightly enough to prevent him getting any leverage to work them free, and became tighter if he pulled too hard. Masterful. He couldn't have designed better himself.

Huge hands slid around his neck from behind, strapping something over his chin. The murky light, his long-missing glasses, and the angle made it hard to tell what it was, but as it settled in place he realised it was a bowl-like mask with a watertight rubber seal clamping onto his face, over his nose and mouth, with just enough room for him to open his jaw slightly, and a short wide tube leading to a large funnel. Equius' eyes widened. This was worrying. Still, nothing he couldn't handle. The Grand Highblood's stinking breath hit his ear in a cool gust as the huge troll chuckled, and Equius calmed. Whatever he was to be subjected to, it was an honour to obey this troll, a service to the Empire to exercise his ability to bear suffering, and a joy to protect his moirail. The worse it was, the greater the satisfaction in withstanding it.

A warm, soothing smell reached his nose through the funnel, and it took him a moment to recognise it; a young female subjugglator, not yet at full size, led in a small hoofbeast on a rope halter. The little beast whinnied and pulled away at the stink of the torture chamber, but the handler stroked it and whispered to it, calming it enough to keep it still. Equius frowned; the poor thing was not old enough to take a troll for itself, and so it did not belong indoors, especially not in a room such as this one. No wonder it was afraid. How could these trolls mistreat an innocent creature so? It was blasphemy, that was what it was, the heathen clowns tormenting the beasts which for millennia had been Alternia's greatest symbol of STRENGTH and pride! Why was it even here? The possible answers were each more disgusting than the last, but nothing he couldn't bear... He was not prepared for what happened.

The Grand Highblood stalked around in front of the watching captive, took the rope halter from the trembling troll, and dismissed her with a wave. She vanished from Equius' line of sight, and the Highblood unbound the rope from the little hoofbeast and strung it from a hook in the ceiling. With a great heave, he lifted the animal and looped the rope around its heels before it could struggle free, leaving it thrashing and bellowing in terror as it dangled from the ceiling. Equius made a muffled sound, his jaw unable to open enough to form words, attempting to soothe it or to protest, he was unsure. The Highblood ignored him, gripped the creature's head in one hand, and in one smooth movement tore out its throat.

A great gush of blood poured out, and landed directly in the funnel.

With all the presence of mind he had trained into himself over the sweeps, Equius managed to keep his mouth closed as the warm blue liquid hit it, though he let out a sound of horror in a rush of breath through his nose as his lips squeezed shut. He wished he had not, as the gag rapidly filled up, covering his mouth and nose, and he had emptied his lungs with the cry. Tears of grief and disgust leaked from his eyes, and he looked up at the smirking Highblood in horror.

The troll shrugged. "You can drink, or you can drown. Your motherfucking choice, kiddo."

He managed to hold out until he fainted. For his pains, he woke up in the same chair, wearing the same bloody mask, with a ring-gag added.


	2. Chapter 2

Blue streaks fell into the dented beaker and made the rusty-tasting water salty. Equius drank it anyway, desperate to kill the burning feeling in his throat. He had vomited the blood into the grate in the corner until he thought his bones would come up with it, scratching his throat raw to make sure he'd forced out as much as he could, but he knew he couldn't have stopped the absorption of some, and he was sure he could feel his own veins burning as his shame flowed through them. He cried until the racking sobs hurt his chest more than the vomiting had, curling up on the floor of his cell, feeling weak for the first time in his life, feeling like the little boy he had until recently been and wanting nothing more than to see Nepeta again, and Aurthour too if the centaur would forgive him.

It wasn't his fault, he told himself over and over. He had not killed anything. The innocent creatures' blood was on the Highblood's hands only... because Equius had been stubborn. If he had spoken up this would not have happened... What? No! He shook his head. No beast was as important as Nepeta's life. What was he thinking? How could he be so selfish? His weeping, barely under control, started again as he mentally replayed the scenario with Nepeta in place of the foal. No, he could not allow that to happen. He had been STRONG so far, he could do this. He sniffed one last time, sat up, wiped his mouth, and clasped his hands over his bloodpusher, bowing his head. In silence, he wished the soul of the dead beasts well, in the way he had for Nepeta's hunts. The first time he had expected her to make fun, but she had joined in. As she had said, "Life is purrecious, we should show respect." He had made a comment about how it would be more respectful to the beasts to not eat them, and Nepeta had cuffed his ear and pouted at him, but he'd never felt paler for her.

He put Nepeta out of his mind and crawled, chest still hurting, to the dish on the floor. He would keep up his STRENGTH and with luck Nepeta would find him soon. Needing comfort from his squeakbeasts, he shuffled over to the corner, breaking the grubloaf into pieces. "Little ones?" he whispered. "Time to eat, come out..."

The nest was gone and there were pieces of straw and fur in the grubloaf.


	3. Chapter 3

He was left undisturbed after that, but also un-fed. For the first week, this was a relief. Metallic-tasting water was still delivered through the flap in the door, in dirty leather tankards with which he couldn't hurt himself or the subjugglator guards. A particularly kind one sneaked him a straw-stuffed pillow, but would not speak to him. He didn't mind much. Equius was almost impossible to bore; he spent his time exercising and scratching out diagrams on the dusty walls, making plans for new devices he could show Nepeta when he got out. He tried to break out himself, but the cell was designed to hold his STRENGTH, and besides, where would he go? Either he'd set off the alarms and be recaptured immediately or he'd fall out into space. As the days passed and the hunger and loneliness started to gnaw at him, he considered the second option - at least he'd take the enemy with him - but he had not lost hope. Nepeta and the rebels could arrive any day, surely.

After ten days, his stomach was hurting too much to ignore, and his limbs felt weaker than they ever had. Reluctantly, but desperate to survive, he picked out strands of musty straw from the increasingly mouldy pillow and chewed them one by one. It was another way to mark time, at least.

At the end of week two, he was woken by the smell of cooked meat. Coughing, he sat up and discovered a plate beside him, containing a thick yellow slab of what seemed to be roasted hornbeast, still hot, bubbling with fat. He pushed it away in conscious disgust, but he was still a troll, and his stomach still craved meat even if his mind did not. He paced the cell, trying to ignore the fragrant steam and only succeeding in taunting himself, until the meat went cold. Finally, enraged, he tore the meat to shreds and threw it down the sewer grating in the corner. Had he left it any longer, he would have eaten; he couldn't let them break him that easily.

Next day, the door-flap opened and a wooden bowl slid through. Equius scrambled to grab it, saliva flowing into his mouth and stomach gurgling at the smell of vegetable broth, and realised only after he'd sipped from it that the surface was seething although the broth was cold. He scooped a little out, and flung it and the bowl away with a sickened shout.

Maggots. Hundreds of them squirmed in the bowl, several in the splashed broth on the floor. Equius retched and scrubbed his hands on his shirt, picked up the bowl at arm's length, and turned to the grate, then paused.

The grate had been installed to cater to the laziness of the guards more than the comfort of the prisoners; it was too small for him to climb down, and led directly into a fast-flowing water pipe. Presumably it went to be recycled as fertiliser in the onboard gardens, or possibly out the airlock. Wouldn't the maggots drown? Probably, yes, and if so, how was throwing them down the drain any better than eating them? No, he didn't want to give in, he couldn't...

... he was so _hungry._

He crushed the insects as quickly and mercifully as he could, and ignored the guilt and the bitter taste.


	4. Chapter 4

"Wake up, little motherfucker," the huge purpleblood said, muffled by a mouthful of meat. He leaned over and let hot blue fat drip onto his captive's cheek.

Equius squirmed in the chair, pulling halfheartedly at the bindings. He hadn't been able to break them the first time, he had no chance now even with his terror-sweat lubricating the way. After two weeks of starvation followed by the maggot broth, he'd spent another three days being fed scraps, all meat. Trolls and their beasts did not leave many scraps; most of what he'd received had been bones with the marrow sucked out, tatters of skin with hair still on, the odd trace of grease or blood, meat as crawling with maggots as the broth had been or too far into putrefaction for even howlbeast lusii to want. He had eaten what he could stomach, pretending the bones were sticks of wood and ignoring the rotting reek from the parts he'd thrown down the drain. The time he'd been given chewed shards of cuttlefish bones had made him weep for memories of Feferi and how dismissive he'd been of her - now she and the Sufferists were his only hope - but he had eaten them. After lacking nourishment for so long, he struggled to break them between his loosening teeth. For the first time in his life, he was weak.

"Not talking?" The Grand Highblood ran a greasy finger across Equius' chapped lips and gestured with the huge rib-bone in his other hand. Equius followed the wave to the carcass of a centaur, its lower ribcage broken open and spilling organs, the meaty bones propped over the torture chamber's lit furnace. Equius wrinkled his nose at the fragrant smoke. At least the centaur was too short and thin-moustached to be Aurthour.

"Disgusting," he mumbled before he could stop himself, and tensed when he realised the Highblood had heard him. In the brief silence, his stomach gurgled loudly.

The Highblood's response was a deafening boom of laughter. "Sounds like you're getting used to it, boy," he said, waving the rib under Equius' nose. Unlike Gamzee's, his voice was steady, remaining at a low soft pitch, chosen to unnerve rather than intimidate for the moment. "Already got you gobbling the scrag-ends down like you love it, how much more d'you want the good shit? Speak to me, boy, I want to hear your squawkbox make with the words again."

Equius swallowed hard and emitted a croak, his throat dry and sore from lack of practice speaking. "I... I'd rather not... sir," he added hastily.

 _"'Your mirthfulness',"_ the Highblood corrected him. "Hoity-toity little bucketdrinker, ain't you? Too good for the food we so motherfuckin' generously give you? Ah, no, I remember your first day here - the beasts too good for you, then, little bootlicker? You liked it, I know. You're liking it now. Always wanted to serve as a trashcan for your betters, haven't you?"

Equius mumbled something noncommittal. His stomach gurgled again and gave him a painful cramp, and he clenched his abdominal muscles, wishing the restraints around his neck and forehead would let him double up. The change in diet was doing terrible things to his insides. He wondered if the ghosts of the beasts killed for him were stamping or kicking his guts invisibly, enacting revenge, and tried not to giggle at the thought. He really was close to snapping, he thought.

"If you're that hungry I'll let you clean the pens out. Every-fuckin'-thing in there _was_ plants at one point, right?" the Highblood said, and chuckled darkly.

"If I thought it would make you stop killing, your mirthfulness, I gladly would. I'd beg to. But I know it won't, and I know enough about zoonotic infections to know that in my current state I would not survive. I'd rather my moirail never had to hear I left her that way." Equius sighed. "Once, long ago, I let her down on that score. I swore it wouldn't happen again."

"Stop killing, ha, says you! How many motherfuckin' bugs have you eaten this week? If a life's a life, why kill them and cry for mammals?" The Highblood chuckled again and shook his head. "D'you care as much about your own kind? Would you do the same to save a troll who wasn't your pale pal?"

"An innocent troll, perhaps, your mirthfulness."

"How cute. Principles. Think that'll save you from your ancestors' shame at spawning a grass-guzzler? Should be thankful, all you'd be good for if I hadn't found you is meat." The Highblood squeezed Equius' arm and chest, absentmindedly drawing patterns on him in grease and blood. "Herbivore flesh is so motherfuckin' soft, so sweet, too bad you're so ungrateful I'm showing you." He rubbed the meat across Equius' upper lip, watching him dry-heave. "Couple more days and you'll be snatching it from my hand, see if you ain't a proper troll then."

Equius seethed internally with rage and shame, and redoubled his determination. Vegetarians were not weak, could this troll not see that? Choosing not to kill beasts was respect, not cowardice! Would a coward have kept to his beliefs among those that mocked them? Would a weak troll have survived this long? Surely not...

"Why not simply force me? Your mirthfulness."

"That's for information. Little sense wasting the voodoos when we know you don't know a motherfucking thing about where your friends went."

Equius blinked in horror. "W-what? If you know I know nothing, then why...?"

The Grand Highblood leaned closer and whispered "Because, trashcan, when we do find your traitor hatchmates, I'll soften them up for the breaking by showing them what's become of you." He smirked and slowly licked the grease from Equius' trembling lip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rest assured I have no intention of writing GHB's grosser midchapter threat actually happening. Please don't hate me for including it?


	5. Chapter 5

The door creaked open, and a female voice cried "Knock knock, clownfish!" Equius twitched in the chair as the Highblood's eyes lit up and the huge troll spun to see the new arrival. Oh no.

"BABY!" he roared, loud enough to make Equius' ears pop, and lunged across the room to scoop up the bejewelled figure. The Condesce, for it was she, laughed and kissed his cheek. "Missed you."

"Whale, ya know how it is, but I shrimply could not pass up seeing the new guppy." The Highblood swung her around and she landed neatly on her feet, sizing Equius up. Next to him and the Highblood she looked like a wriggler's doll, sandwiched between towering horns and delicate heeled boots, and she had a smile like a guillotine. The Highblood unhooked something from a wall bracket; a tiny wire cage, ontaining a fat squeakbeast. It writhed and screeched as he enveloped it in one massive hand and placed it in the Condesce's dainty one, and she let it try to run from one hand to the other as she nodded approvingly. "Tasty li'l thing, huh, or it looks like he was anyways." She glanced sideways at the Highblood's muscled body. "Plan workin'?"

"Mm-hm," the Highblood said with a satisfied nod. "Soon I'll have him literally eating out of my hand."

"Only 'soon'? Ha, whale, I got an idea not a million leagues from that..."

The squeakbeast was thrashing in her hands, biting and drawing blood. She bent and placed it on the floor, and let it run a few paces before bringing her foot down on it. Her heels were as sharp as knives; her legs must have been ludicrously STRONG to walk with so little support. The tip pierced the creature's back with a horrible crunch drowned out by its shriek. The Highblood pushed a small table up behind her and swept off the knives and mallets atop it, allowing her to sit on the edge, and stroked her hair gently.

Equius trembled as the Condesce gracefully raised her leg, pressing her shoe against his cheekbone and bringing the twitching body of the rodent up to his lips. Puberty had caused more than one guilty dream startlingly similar to this, but right now he couldn't think of anywhere he wanted less to be. Hot fresh blood and the black filth from the floor smeared across his face, and he dry-heaved again on an empty stomach.

"I can wait, guppy, I can wait," the Condesce cooed.

The sooner he started, the sooner it would be over. Equius gulped, closed his eyes, and hesitantly closed his teeth around the dying creature's head. He bit and swallowed as quickly as he could, then started licking the mess from the shoe, and heard the Condesce's delighted moan.

~

Equius had never thought he would be happy to see the inside of his cell again. He curled in the corner, clutching his roiling stomach with one hand and trying to scrape the filth off himself with the other. His shirt tore under his jagged claws, and he noticed the condition of his clothes - constantly soggy with sweat and with no way of washing the blood from them, they had started to rot on him. He gave up and stripped them off. The cell was not unbearably cold for a blueblood. He tucked his arms and legs in and tried to sleep, sitting up defensively in the far corner of the cell.

He failed to fall asleep, and was still awake and shivering when his evening's water was pushed through the door. The foul salty blood had made him desperate for a drink, and he took it and sipped... Why did the water always taste so metallic when it was in a leather tankard? Strange.

Torchlight shone through the miniscule crack between the door and the frame, and what he took to be a shadow swirled in the water. No, not a shadow, a discolouration. He knelt up and held the tankard to the light, squinting and wishing for more light and his spectacles. Yes, there was definitely a streak of dark blue swirling in...

He screamed and flung the tankard away as he finally recognised the taste. Little by little, ever since he had arrived, his captors had been fouling his water ration with increasing amounts of blood. He retched and scraped his tongue with his claws, coughing as the dirt beneath them left an even worse taste in his mouth, but now the water had spilled into the grate and he couldn't wash it away even if he had wanted to drink the mixture. He wept, shedding water he could ill afford to lose. Being forced was bad enough, but to be tricked like this felt like a whole new violation. Equius curled up again, and stared blankly at the wall.

A day later a plate came through the door, containing meat that looked untouched. His hunger made him investigate; terrible as it was, he still needed nourishment. He put it to his tongue and dropped it, spluttering, as he realised how much hot pepper was in it. Perhaps that was why the original diner had discarded it. Breathing through his nose for a moment sapped the burn, and he squinted at the meat. "Well," he murmured to himself, "if that's his new trick, he's losing his touch." He ate, wishing the beast's spirit well, and felt almost cheered up. At least his stomach was full. He could survive a little longer, and by then Nepeta could be here. He licked his teeth, and one fell out. No matter, he could grow more.

His mouth felt unpleasantly dry. Slowly, he realised the pepper had distracted him from the meat's saltiness. Today, he had got his wish; they had given him no water.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While GH does not carry out his threat, what he does in this chapter might be worse. Trust me, this is sick. Out of curiosity, anyone reading this familiar with the infamous Furaffinity horror comic, DripRat's "The Screaming Barrel"?

Equius sat on the floor today, unbound, as he had shown he was no longer fighting. The tiny songbird fluttered in Equius' mouth, calling shrilly and pecking at his lips and chin under the muzzle which prevented more than its head from emerging. Its claws were tearing up his tongue. His jaw trembled, but he had been hesitating to bite down for a good ten minutes.

It had been a week. Two days with food but no water, followed by daily sessions in the torture chamber. By then he was truly facing the probability that he was going to die. The Condesce had visited again, and she and the Highblood had taken great delight in feeding him each day. The Highblood preferred to crush or dismember the various small animals with his bare hands, while Condesce would slit their throats with her nails, spear or stomp them beneath her boots, or place several in her hair and let the prehensile strands throttle them. The first time Equius had refused to open his mouth, but Condesce had stood in front of him with a jug of clean sweet water. He had started salivating as she poured some into a glass and sipped it in front of him. The Highblood had picked up the mangled corpse of a hopbeast, and Equius knew what he wanted.

When they had finally given him a cup of water - the best he'd ever tasted, and he'd tried hard to neither cry nor let his guard down - they had also given him vitamin pills, which he didn't think was good; the only reason they would give him anything good was to keep him alive longer. This had repeated each day, but this time they'd decided to raise the stakes once more.

He gave in and bit down, and his captors applauded as the bird's head slid from under the muzzle and landed in his lap. The bones snapped and cut his mouth. The Condesce slipped out of view, and the Highblood removed Equius' muzzle, dipped his finger in the blood running from his mouth, and wrote on his bare chest the word "TRASHCAN".

Condesce returned from an adjoining room with, to Equius' horror, an infant hoofbeast. It looked very much like the one the Highblood had used the first time, but this time he didn't touch it. Equius knew what he was expected to do. He sat still, wondering what to do. The beast looked at him as if it expected him to save it, and tears came to his eyes.

"If you don't eat your meat, ya can't have any water!" the Condesce said, sing-song and giggling. "How can you have any water if ya don't eat yer meat?" She and the Highblood laughed uproariously and clapped each other on the back.

Equius embraced the little beast, humming softly to soothe it; it whinnied and nuzzled him, and he sobbed into its mane. Poor creature, it shouldn't have to suffer for him. His claws were softening and his muscles were shrunken and sagging. He thought for a moment, then extracted his last reasonably sharp tooth and ground the tip on the stone floor to make sure. It entered the foal's neck with ease, and it died quickly with a spray of blood which hit the Highblood's boots. Equius leaned down, and drank. His captors exchanged a glance, and the Condesce murmured "Think it's time?" The Highblood nodded.

They made him keep eating until his stomach hurt, then lick the gritty, cooling blood from the floor and their shoes, before they gave him water. When they did, the Condesce shoving vitamin pills into his mouth along with it with the words "Swallow 'em! We'll check ya did!", they let him finish the whole jug, but there was an odd sticky grittiness to it which stuck to his tongue. He licked his remaining teeth, rubbed his bloated stomach, and frowned quizzically.

"Pre-emptive antibiotics." The words snapped off Condesce's palate, and she grinned, shackling his wrists to the wall. "You gonna need 'em this aftermidnight, guppy."

~

When they returned several hours later, Equius hoped they weren't going to carry out the Highblood's threat about the beast pens. Either way, resistance would do no good, so he drank the proffered medicated water, and allowed his hands to be bound. The Highblood yanked the rope. "Walk, bitch." On shaky legs, he did; instead of taking him back to his cell, they entered a different corridor, equally dark and murky, and filled with an unpleasantly familiar smell.

Condesce strutted behind him as the Highblood dragged him down the corridor, talking without looking at him. "Seems you're tougher than we thought, trashcan. Got you suffering easy enough but all this time and we've only got one good scream outta you." Equius winced at the realisation there must have been spying devices in his cell - he should have known earlier, how else would they have known when he found the blood in his water? "We can't show you to those blasphemous little motherfuckers you call hatchmates in this state, can we?" The Highblood snickered at the jerk on the rope as Equius went rigid. "Oh yeah, we got 'em. Little mucusblood Leijon's your palemate, yes?"

"Y-you're lying!"

The Highblood shrugged. "Might be, but how would you know?"

"Aw hahaha!" The Condesce's laugh was astoundingly grating. "We _will_ have 'em, and it's rude to keep 'em waitin' till you ready. Betides, you're gettin' borin'. Strong'n'silent types, bleh."

They arrived at another door, the foul smell by now becoming strong enough to make Equius cough. When the door opened, it became much worse, a sickening fug of decay which brought a cloud of flies with it and made Condesce draw back, gills fluttering wildly.

"Augh!" She unzipped the top of her bodysuit and pulled a pack of smokeleaf sticks from between her rumblespheres, but the Highblood gently pushed her hand down.

"Ah, honey, no. No fires. The gas," he said, almost gently. With a pout, she tucked the pack back and pulled out a handkerchief instead, which she held delicately to her nose.

The Highblood seemed to actually enjoy the stench, inhaling deeply and honking softly in satisfaction as he turned on a light. "Ah, sweet destruction. What we all come to one day. Some sooner than others."

The room within was dimly lit, dimmed further by the clouds of flies which mobbed the light fixture. The air was moist and stagnant, cool but not cold enough to slow whatever was rotting. Another door was let into a massive vertical tube from floor to ceiling, thick-walled and wide enough for the Highblood to have stood and turned around in, a grate in the top letting air and light through. This seemed to be the source of the smell.

"Count yourshellf lucky, trashcan," said Condesce, taking the leash as Highblood opened this door, releasing another burst of stink and flies. "We ushelly use the drowning pipes for seadwellers. 'Course they're a little misnamed. Drowning's for when we _like_ you." She toyed with Equius' hair. "The reel good little buoys'n'gills get weights so they sink fast. Most get to paddle till they fall asleep."

"And you... you're motherfuckin' _special."_ The Highblood turned, holding out a harness on a steel cable. Equius noticed the pulley beside the door. "This will hold you up, and this..." he said, switching on a device attached to what must have been the neck-strap, "checks your vitals and signals the pulley to go up if you get your head under. We want you out breathing. Eventually." Equius urged himself to run, but he was frozen to the spot in fear as his bonds were rearranged and the harness strapped around his chest and hips. The thick hide straps were arranged so his mouth and claws could not reach them, a metal bar lying over the back of his shoulders and his hands tied to it behind his head. Even in his weakened state he might be able to break them with a few hours of pulling, but again, where would he go? "Nothing to say?"

"...no."

"Liar, that's a thing you're saying," the Highblood said, shaking a finger at him.

"No, I mean no, I can't go in there, I can't..."

"Ah, now you start motherfuckin' begging. Too late, kid."

"You'll be out an' aboat again soon, don't cry!" Condesce cooed, still stroking his hair as if she was his lusus and he was a wriggler. "Your shipmates will be wantin' to sea you when we done."

"So will the mirthmakers," the Highblood rumbled. "Hose you down, string you up in the tents and see what you'll swallow." He gripped his codpiece and performed a pelvic thrust to illustrate the point, and he and Condesce cackled. He pushed Equius, and laughed again as the blueblood stumbled backwards into the pipe, falling with a jolt and dangling from the harness. Condesce pushed a button, and the cable started to lower him slowly down.

"See, kid, there's only so much motherfuckin' wall space for the holy murals and only so many dead worth being part of 'em. We have to put the rest somewhere."

The pipe was dark, and Equius' vision was blurred enough without his prescription dark glasses. He swung and reached out a foot to touch the wall, dislodging more flies; the wall was shiny and slick, wet with something, with no footholds. He couldn't reach both walls at once, nor grip the cable to climb up. Flies crawled into his ears and nose, and he tried to shake them away. As his vision adjusted, he started to recognise colours on the walls along with the patches of mould. The stench was unbearable now, worse combined with the jolting movements of the cable. His stomach, now mostly empty, churned, and he was sure he felt the overtaxed muscles wrenching or tearing as he gagged again.

He looked down.

The Highblood smirked down on him as Equius finally started screaming in earnest, looking into the glossy blank eyes of the corpses at the bottom of the pipe. Beasts and trolls and things which may have been alien subjects of the Empire lay atop each other, a few almost whole, a mass of detached pieces, blanketed by humming flies and thrashing maggots. Equius drew his knees up to avoid touching the surface, but still he sank down, eventually knocking aside the pieces to uncover the liquid blood below.

"The top layer's fresh!" Highblood called down. "Killed specially for you in case you get hungry!"

He closed the door slowly, his gleaming grin broadening at Equius' sobbing cries of "Pull me up! Pull me up! _PULL ME UP!"_


	7. Chapter 7

"Vriska, stop fucking about!" Terezi's blind eyes stared in Vriska's direction behind purple contact lenses.

"My eye's uncomfortable," Vriska moaned, poking at the matching lens in her own remaining eye.

"I know, but we need you paying attention, and shush!"

Vriska shrugged and psychically redirected the attention of the dungeon guard, allowing the little group to pass unseen down the dank corridor. "Sollux fucked enough with the cameras, sheesh, we're safe. That key he gave you working too?"

Nepeta, the last of the disguised trio, held up the device to the electronic lock on the first door; it clicked and beeped, and the door swung creakily open. She peered in. "Okay, this one's empty - next one. Remember, we have to get everyone out as quickly as we can, get the healthy ones to help the others out while we move along. With luck we can do this before the Empress and the head clown get back from planet duty."

"Jailbreak!" Vriska grinned and punched the air.

Even she lost the grin as they progressed through the dungeon. None of the trolls they freed would be much use if they had to fight their way out, and the girls thanked the Mother Grub for Sollux' trickery breaking security cameras and shutting down the electronic doors, and for Vriska's ability to hide them in plain sight. They picked locks and cut ropes and snapped chains, and let themselves be embraced by emaciated and twisted limbs, kissed by mouths missing teeth or tongues or lips, smothered in every shade of blood (barring tyrian - Feferi was safe in the Sufferists' caverns). The strongest victims carried the weakest out, others leaned on each other, and their rescuers urged them down the corridor in front as they went, keeping themselves between the non-combatants and the exit in case of a suspicious purpleblood's arrival.

The torture chamber at the end was empty but for stains on the floor, and when Nepeta opened the door at the other end Terezi fell back, retching and covering her nose.

"God..." She coughed. "Sorry, guys, I don't think I can help here! Everything's black to me in there. Eugh, what is it, a sewer?"

Vriska wrinkled her nose and said "No. Smells like my mom's breath. There's dead shit in there, and a lot of it. We should leave."

"No!" Nepeta said firmly. "Not until we're sure there's nobody alive left behind. Terezi, stand guard."

Vriska skulked behind Nepeta to the room at the end of the passage, swatting flies and scowling when Nepeta's cybernetic tail raised up and whipped insects out of its owner's hair and towards Vriska's face. "Hey, watch it!"

"Sorry." Nepeta opened the door and both paused to cough hard and adjust to the reek, then again to look around the room. "What's this?" she said, prodding at the electronic pulley controls beside the huge pipe.

"Best way to find out!" said Vriska, jabbing the Up button. Creaking, sloshing, a wet sucking sound, and a rush of flies and warm stinking air emerged from the door's grate. Nepeta applied Sollux' opening device to the lock, and the girls braced themselves, weapons at the ready; Nepeta took a deep breath and used her claw blade to flick the door fully open.

Inch by inch, a dark form emerged, dripping, into view. At first the girls thought the troll was dead; he was thin as a rake and thickly covered toe to throat in blood and liquefying flesh, rotted together to a uniform black. Thinner smears covered up to his lips. Nepeta swallowed hard and Vriska winced as they realised he had been eating the filth, or possibly trying to drown himself in it. Between his swollen eyelids, leaking pus and indigo tears, pinprick pupils stared out. Nepeta moaned in horror as she recognised his broken horn, and hugged him despite the mess.

Vriska gripped her sword hilt harder. "Holy fuck, so that's where he went."


	8. Chapter 8

The Sufferists had stolen as many medical supplies as they could carry, and under normal circumstances the antibiotics they'd brought back could have served the whole cadre for weeks. Back on Alternia, Equius required them all, and only got them because Nepeta vouched for him. She watched over him at night and slept beside him in the day in the infirmary cavern, forcing medicine into him, pouring copious amounts of weak salt, sugar, and vitamin solutions down his throat and mopping up when his digestive system violently ejected the liquids and what he did absorb was sweated out. Every part of him that could be infected seemed to be; eyes and ears, clawbeds and hornbeds, the cracks in his dry lips and the holes where his teeth had been, the rashes on his skin where maggots had eaten away at him. For weeks he lay in delirium, and when he finally woke, he still barely seemed alive.

Nepeta knew something was wrong when he wouldn't eat the bland vegetable broth she made for his first real food after his rescue. She left him to it, wondering if he just didn't want to be watched, and ate her own meal. When she returned, the broth was cold and untouched, and Equius stared at the blood on her lips with a look of both ravenous hunger and intense sorrow. She boiled up some bone marrow, not daring to give him anything harder to digest, and he fell on it like a starving barkbeast. He kept it down, but she couldn't be happy about it. Before his captivity, he had always sworn he'd die before he ate another creature.

Vriska and Tavros borrowed a scuttlebuggy from a mechanically-minded cultist and disappeared for a couple of days; when they returned from the area Vriska and Equius had grown up in, they brought Aurthour. They had hoped Equius would be happy to see him, but he shrank away, shaking. When Aurthour tried to hold him he threw his arms around the centaur's neck and wept, for the first time able to return touches without harming. His voice was raspy and quiet from screams, infection, and inconsistent use, but Nepeta heard the words he whispered over and over. _"Please don't make me do it."_

"Do what?" Nepeta asked, gently resting a hand on his arm and being pushed away.

Equius brushed a finger over his lip. "I did it, I did everything, I'll do it again, but not Aurthour, please..."

Nepeta tried again to touch him, to soothe him. "Equius, you're free! Nobody's going to make you do anything!" He remained tense. "We're in the Sufferists' caves. We got you out. You're home."

"No, Nepeta, nobody leaves the Subjugglators' dungeon! I just hope I'm dreaming again or they'll make me do it to you too, I can't..."

"Well, we did!" Vriska poked her head in and made a victory sign. "You don't believe the amaaaaaaaazing Captain Serket could pull off a heist like that?"

"No, I must," Equius murmured to himself, not hearing them. "I can't make you do it... unless you would do me that favour willingly?" He tilted his head back. "You could survive on me for days, wait for them to get careless-"

"Damn it, Zahhak, appreciate what I did for you already!" Vriska kicked irritably at the floor and snapped "We gave you sopor, we tried to give you real food! You're in a cave with real stone walls! Why the fuck would you think you're still on the ship?"

Equius actually seemed to be listening, chewing his lip with his tiny jagged stubs of new teeth. "For all I know it could be a trick," he whispered. "They would, they'd get inside your heads and make you act to get my guard back down."

"Would you believe us if we took you outside?" Nepeta noted the brief flicker of hope in Equius' eyes. She wrapped her coat around his shoulders, in case the ill-fitting clothes the Sufferists had lent him were not warm enough. Even after he had lost so much muscle mass, it was too small for him to actually put his arms in without tearing it, so she draped it over him like a cloak. "Okay, are you strong enough to walk? No? Right, Aurthour, hold him up. Vriska, give him a hand..."

In the safety of the cloudy night, Aurthour and Vriska half-carried Equius outside, Nepeta following. Hope returned to his face as he smelled the air, heard the sounds of beasts and birds. They turned the corner and emerged into the faint moonlight, and Equius' worn face lit up with astonished delight. Aurthour and Vriska set him down in the grass, and he lay on his back and beamed at the sky. For the first time since his capture, he relaxed.

"I should have known I could believe you, Nepeta."

She curled up in the crook of his arm. "Pale for you too."

Aurthour picked an apple, Nepeta sliced it with her claw blades, and, very slowly, Equius ate every bit.


End file.
